The artistic practice of David Ryrie is resonant of the encounter at its most bare and honest. ‘Otherwise arbitrary moments’ is an exhibition of new work that pairs these seemingly ordinary encounters with the question of human scale. Preserving an array of moments through large scale photography, Ryrie posits our grown and assumed relationship to things as fluid, changeable and dreamlike. Just as we may recall an event or a fleeting moment in a new way each time we remember it, these images offer new detail and revelations at each viewing.

 With great sensitivity to the physical world and photography’s uncanny ability to level the ontological plain of objects, Ryrie shifts our understanding of the value of things. Expanding scale and turning proportion, the banal is made poignant, while the familiar is drawn out long enough to unnerve and arrest. This exhibition sees Ryrie present large scale images working in tandem on the viewer as installation, and is his first major solo at the Gallery.

Ryrie was a finalist in the Olive Cotton Award in 2017, Winner of the People’s Choice, Goulburn Art Award in 2020. His work is held in the Macquarie Group and Australian Club collections as well as significant private collections.